Sparkling Cyanide

I had bought this book at a second hand store and with it brought By The Pricking of My Thumbs as well. It will always be a good bargain as had I not bought the same, I would not have got to read parts of this book as by the virtue of a mistake in the stitching, parts of the books have been interchanged. It seems more of a coincidence that I bought them at once.
Well enough of the interesting shopping, let us now look at the story. A rich heiress to a fortune marries a person years older than her and brings her only little sister to live with them. At a party tragedy strikes as the depressed heiress collapses, revealing cyanide poisoning to be the cause of the apparent suicide. Curiousness strikes the husband days later as he gets anonymous letters pointing it to be a murder. The sister also unearths some doubts as to her faithfulness. With clues strewn here and there, the husband sets to trap the murderer in the same setting about a year later. But tragedy strikes once more as the husband is murdered in front of everyone at the same way.
With several characters to investigate upon, the primary investigators find a sleuth hidden among the suspects. With revelations as surprising as the actual mastermind of the heinous crimes, the accessory of the murder will not be so surprising when identified.

Greatest Stories

This had been a very old book in my shelf. The short chronicles are arranged as
• Hostage to Momus
• The Gift of the Magi
• Telemachus, Friend
• A Ramble in Aphasia
• The Passing of Black Eagle
• The Shamrock and the Palm
• Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet
• Past One at Rooney’s
• The Princess and the Puma
• The Moment of Victory
• The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear
• The Brief Debut of Tildy
• The cop and the Anthem
• The Last of the Troubadours
• The Memento
• A Ruler of Men
• The Man Higher Up
• A Municipal Report
Going thru the signature twists in the plots in each of them brought back the enjoyment in the fullest. It seemed that age has ripened the flavour even more. It is not that these all commence in comedies but tragedies too had been wrapped up in such a pleasant ambience that it steals a moment to contemplate whether to lament or laugh. The collection inspires a promising vacuum to be satisfied by a host of similar others.